Andy Taylor of Duran Duran thanks ‘guardian angel’ for new treatment after Stage 4 cancer diagnosis
Andy Taylor didn’t think he’d still be alive this month, let alone making and releasing new music.
“I’ve had two rounds of this treatment over the past couple of months and I’m like from the walking dead to the singing and dancing,” the former Duran Duran guitarist said in a Monday interview on British talk show “Lorraine.”
In November, as Duran Duran was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Los Angeles, his bandmates revealed Taylor had been diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer four years earlier and that he was forced to miss the induction due to his deteriorating health.
However, earlier this year, the English rocker started a new radiation treatment, Lutetium-177, which is known to extend the length and quality of life of patients with metastatic prostate cancer. Last month, Taylor celebrated being “asymptomatic” in an interview and thanked Christopher Evans, a Welsh scientist and biotech entrepreneur, who had suggested he take the treatment.
Original Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor missed the Rock Hall induction ceremony but revealed in a letter that he was diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer.
This week, on the heels of the release of the singer’s first full-length solo recording in more than 30 years, “Man’s a Wolf to Man,” Taylor called Evans “a guardian angel.”
“I finished the album on a high as opposed to thinking it might be my last solo album,” he told show host Lorraine Kelly. He said that when he started recording the album, amid his cancer fight, he drew on his health struggles. It took a more positive spin once he started treatment.
“Music is the greatest therapy you can have when you’re in the doldrums,” Taylor said. “When I got the news that there was a treatment and I could move forward, the album kind of went from a darker album to a more uplifting album.”
“Man’s a Wolf to Man,” which is packed with echoes of Taylor’s 1980s new wave sound with Duran Duran, was listed as BBC Radio 2’s album of the week.
Set to release their 15th album, Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon and John Taylor talk recovering from COVID, their favorite bad review and plastic trousers.
Taylor left Duran Duran in 1986 but was with the group as it ascended the pop charts in the dawn of the MTV era with hits such as “Girls on Film,” “Rio” and “Hungry Like the Wolf.” He reunited with vocalist Simon Le Bon, keyboardist Nick Rhodes, bassist John Taylor and drummer Roger Taylor (no relation to either) in 2001. The original lineup released new music together, including 2004’s “Astronaut” album, before Andy Taylor departed again in 2006.
During the “Lorraine” interview, Taylor also said that he had recorded several songs with his former band for Duran Duran’s forthcoming Halloween-themed album, “Danse Macabre,” which is scheduled to be released Oct. 27.
“I have to laugh about it because you just don’t know,” the guitarist told Kelly while smiling and chuckling. “You know I always say in our business, you never know what’s going to happen, to today, you never know what song you’re going to write, what’s going to happen, how people are going to react — but on this level, you know ... the unexpected has been spectacular.”
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